Of Course Apple Is No Longer the World's Most Valuable Company

Apple's terrible, horrible, no good, historically bad day on the markets Thursday has spilled over into Friday, with Apple ceding back to Exxon Mobil the title of the most valuable company in the world.

Apple's terrible, horrible, no good, historically bad day on the markets Thursday has spilled over into Friday, with Apple ceding back to Exxon Mobil the title of the most valuable company in the world. On the second day following Apple's latest earnings report, which led to a massive stock drop-off, the divide arrived again: As of midday, Apple's market cap had faded to $414.49 billion, while Exxon's stood strong at $417.18 billion. Apple had overtaken the oil giant for the title of earth's most valuable company last August and maintained it until late Friday morning.

The title, of course, is all relative, but you could see it coming after a week that left many talking about the end of an Apple bubble. Apple is stilling selling lots of things and growing in new markets, but Wall Street mostly cared about the company's change in earnings guidance. So Apple now plans to surface more realistic expectations for its quarterly reports, rather than underplaying its expected revenues only to later blow them away. This may or may not be the beginning of the end of Apple's top spot in worldwide worth — Exxon is booming again — but it's still the biggest-ever company in America. But Microsoft, once the most valuable company of all time, is still doing pretty well, with a $233.66 billion market cap.

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.